Get free gun locks while supplies last

Thursday

Mar 20, 2014 at 4:04 PM

By Annette.Manwell@hollandsentinel.com(616) 546-4270

With the goal of decreasing accidental deaths from gun fire, the First Presbyterian Church and Graafschap Hardware will be giving away gun locks from 9 a.m.-noon Saturday at the church, 659 State St.A gun lock is a device that goes through the handle and trigger of a gun to prevent it from firing. Information and material for youths also will be available at the gun lock give-away. There is a limited supply of locks.The free, no-questions-asked, no-identification-required event is meant to stop deaths of children who find guns, a statement from the church said. Such an incident was occurred in January, where a 4-year-old Detroit girl shot her 4-year-old male cousin with a rifle the children had found.“The church, through its community outreach program, seeks to prevent this kind of tragedy from happening again,” the statement said.“It is our hope that these free gun locks will help to prevent a death or injury from occurring in our community,” a second statement about the event from Larry and Kay Briggance said.Further backing its goal to end accidental deaths, the church mentioned that, in 2010, there were 31,076 deaths from shootings of all kinds. Emergency rooms treated 71,505 non-fatal shootings. The federal government studies show that 6 percent of unintentional shootings are by children younger than age 6.The New York Times questioned those statistics in a report published in September. The newspaper studied records in eight states and found that many accidental deaths by children from gun fire are often reported as homicides, making the true number of accidental deaths tough to determine.“According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the statistics regarding young people and guns are alarming,” wrote the Briggances, adding that nearly one in five injury-related deaths of children and adolescents involved firearms.About seven children per day are killed with guns, the Briggances wrote, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics 2010 statistics they shared.Gun locks are not required for the storage of firearms.— Follow this reporter on Facebook or Twitter, @SentinelNetty.